And Now For Something Completely Different ...

This column originally apared on Sunday, May 4, 2008

Readers of a certain age will remember fondly the cartoon “The Rocky & Bullwinkle Show,” and as part of that series the inevitable exchange between two codgers sitting on a park bench watching as madness and frivolity ensues around them.

“That’s something you don’t see every day, Chauncy,” one would always remark. “What’s that Edgar?” would come the reply, followed by a description of the cartoon moose and squirrel being chased in some ridiculously menacing, and completely unexpected, way by a vaguely Eastern European couple somehow involving a lighted bomb.

That situation — albeit absent the moose, the squirrel, the vaguely Eastern European couple and the bomb — was what the folks at the Chester County Courthouse were saying to one another Thursday.

For the first time anyone in West Chester could remember, an all-female jury was empanelled to hear a trial.

The 12 women were of different ages and races, wore differently colored clothing, and had different hairstyles and hair colors. Six wore glasses, and six didn’t. But they all had in common at least one thing — the extra X chromosome.

Even the alternate juror, chosen in the event one of the other jurors had to be excused before the conclusion of the trial, was of the fairer gender.

Judge Thomas G. Gavin, in whose courtroom the jury sat, was among those to marvel at the sight. Despite years of work in the courthouse, including 22 on the bench, he said he had never come across an all-female jury and had never heard of one being seated. But the veteran jurist recognized the unique situation the jury presented, even as he apologized for keeping them outside the courtroom while he conducted other business.

“I was taught never to keep a woman waiting, and now I’ve kept 13 of you waiting,” Gavin said as they took their seats for the start of testimony Thursday. “I realize the degree of difficulty I now find myself in.”

Ultimately, the jury did not get to decide the case, as a mistrial was declared and Gavin was forced to send everyone home. Shame it was, said more than one courthouse observer, since it would be nice to know how an all-female jury would deliberate.

That question, in fact is at the heart of the history of women as jurors. The male-dominated legal community for years kept women off panels because of ignorant prejudices against their perceived weaknesses; would they be too sympathetic to judge the case on its merits and too easily swayed by emotions to render a fair verdict?

The first all-female American jury was seated in 1654, because the court needed to know if the defendant, Judith Catchpole, could have been pregnant at the time of the alleged crime.

But years and years have gone by since women starting serving on juries, and the course of American justice seems to have proceeded fairly much apace. There is no evidence I know of to show that juries with women bring back verdicts predominantly one way or another. And you never know, if there had been “Eleven Angry Men and One Calm Woman,” would we have gotten a verdict sooner, and without all that melodrama? Now our chance is gone.

And all I know is that Bill Scott was the voice of Bullwinkle. But not that Bill Scott.